Across the Great Divide

Shelter Report: The Choices He's Made and the Ones He Hasn't.

When a family shows up at a homeless shelter, it usually means they've run out of much more than housing. 

They're out of money. They've burned bridges with family members. They can't call in favors any more, not even a couch in a friend's basement. They've used up any chances they've earned and maybe squandered a few gifts on the way to the bottom.

In many respects, they're shell-shocked refugees, carrying a few possessions in garbage bags, arriving at the last place that will take them.

And most of them are children.

At People Serving People through the first half of the year, 652 families have come through those doors, including 510 single parents and 61 teen parents.

About 60% of the guests are under age 18 and 34% are 5 or younger.

That means most of the residents didn't make the choices that brought them here.

In my preschool class are two brothers. Let's call them Jackson and Braxton.

If they'd just gotten off an airplane from the Sudan or Southeast Asian refugee camp, it might be easier to understand their behavior — why they're alternately aggressive and tearful, why they have a hard time with structure or following directions, why they fail to acknowledge adult authority.

I hesitate to look too far down the road with boys like these, who each by himself is capable of disrupting the entire classroom. I focus instead on helping Jackson to stop a dangerous activity or calm himself when he's frustrated. To help Braxton see how the choice he makes right now will affect his options later in the morning.

But what's happening here will also affect the choices available to them in the future.

Before they start kindergarten, they must learn to gain control over their impulses. It's more urgent than learning to reproduce the alphabet. But they've come from a disordered world, where they can't see how certain behavior leads to predictable results.

Things are never the same from one day to the next, so why should they strive for constancy? It may only make them feel more vulnerable. Lashing out may make them feel in control but some day on the street, it may get them killed.

The national debate about helping the poor never gets to this level. It never talks about kids who are kicking like hell to reach a life ring that's beyond their grasp. Instead it's judgmental. Political candidates talk about these families as if this is what they chose and they want to be subsidized to stay in it.

That's not what I see.

I see Jackson and Braxton thrashing in the water.

I'm not going to scold them about their momma's choices. I'm not going ask about who was driving the boat before I reach in to pull them out.

Shelter Report: Playground Politics

One little monkey sitting in a tree

Said hey, Mr. Alligator, can't catch me!

Along came the alligator, looked up in the tree.

SNAP!

No more monkeys sitting in the tree.

Our playground at the shelter is pretty Darwinian and the preschoolers love to play.

I am regularly in pursuit of kids who turn themselves into broccoli in order to attract a broccoli-eating monster, and I have a steady line of those who want to be rock-a-bye-babied in order to have their cradle F-A-L-L-L-L from the treetops.

Today, I was also busy giving shoulder rides while simultaneously snapping monkeys off the playground equipment.

One time when the alligator came around, two girls were in a dispute over whose turn it was to get snapped. One insisted the other had slipped in front of her while I was away. The other denied it.

I had a hunch who was telling the truth, but being more than just a playground alligator I told them: I don't know who to believe and I don't like it when people lie to me. So you two work it out between yourselves who should go first. Until you do, nobody gets snapped.

I went on with the shoulder rides. Twice, I came back.

Have you worked it out?

Yes, said one. No, said the other.

I'm not going to tell you what to do. You have to figure it out yourselves, I said.

The third time I came, they had settled the disagreement. What did you do, I asked.

I said, I'm sorry, said one girl. I said, I'm sorry, said the other.

SNAP! SNAP!

No more monkeys sitting in the tree.

 

I came upon two boys fighting.

What happened, I asked. (I never count on getting a straight story.)

He hit me, cried one boy.

Why did you hit him, I asked.

Because he was going to hit me, the boy said.

That isn't a reason to hit someone. Use your words instead. We don't hit on this playground. And don't expect a shoulder ride if you hit people.

What do those Sergeants at Arms do at the capitols, anyway? I think they should come by for training.

Mr. Bolt's Tax Problem Isn't Mine.

Punitive tax policy had kept the world's fastest man from competing in [the U.K.] for the past three years. Explaining Mr. Bolt's decision to skip a 2010 race in London, his agent told reporters: "He will earn a lot less by competing in Britain if he maintains his current endorsement level." Mr. Bolt competed in Paris that August instead.

Few high earners in other fields would choose France over Britain on tax policy, but athletes are a different story. [...] [N]ormally Britain takes a cut of an athlete's worldwide endorsement earnings—that means overseas sponsors in addition to those in the U.K.—proportional to the time spent in Britain.

—Usain Bolt's Tax Lesson

I was steered to this Wall Street Journal item by Economist John Spry and frequent Twitter sparring partner Craig Westover.

Bolt ran six official races in 2011, including the IAAF World Championships. Had one of those events been held in the U.K., his fees for the race would have been subject to the income tax—as well as one-sixth of his world-wide endorsement income.

One source estimates Bolt's current year income totals $20.3 million, which means $3.83 million of his income would be taxed if he ran in London instead of say, Oslo.

(In the U.S., professional athletes pay income taxes in the states where they perform, as a pro-rated percentage of their salaries, but they don't pay state taxes on their endorsements.)

The article also quotes No. 1 tennis player Rafael Nadal, who makes an estimated $33 million, as skipping a Wimbeldon warm-up event because he was "losing money" by playing in the U.K.

Although making less is not quite the same as losing money, no one would blame Nadal or Bolt for exercising their right to pick where they compete and avoid the tax.

Seen another way, each event Bolt runs does contribute to his worth as an endorser. If he ran no races at all, his value would decline, as it does for all athletes, even self-declared legends.

But is it fair to say Bolt "earned" part of his endorsements in a particular race?

Perhaps. But his sponsors determine what they think his name is worth independently of a specific performance. I personally don't think one-sixth of his endorsement income is attributable to one of six races.

As tax policy, the U.K. law seems extreme, doesn't it? And the example certainly underscores the article's conclusion, "that taxes influence behavior."

Less obvious, though, is the second part of the conclusion, that "punitive taxation hurts everyone."

Bolt skipping a London race deprives maybe 50,000 spectators of less than ten seconds of live ecstacy, since Bolt races only in a few countries each year anyway. The lost "economic benefit" of him performing in London is also dubious, since sports fans will still spend their discretionary dollars at soccer matches, in pubs or other entertainments.

No one needs to change the tax code to help out Mr. Bolt who, excluding his training time, will run for about three minutes a year to earn his $20 million. He's perfectly capable of avoiding the unfairness.

But by publicizing such exceptional circumstances, the low-to-no-tax advocates seek to spread the sense of unfairness to the rest of us, thereby reducing support for any taxation schemes—but especially those that tax the wealthy.

Wherever you look, the call for smaller government and lower taxes benefits most the people who have the most and have the most power to evade taxes already.

Shelter Report: Romney's Little Welfare Princesses.

We had a full house of 20 kids in the preschool today. About five children are preparing to enter kindergarten and had some outside classroom work in the morning. There was also a session for their parents helping to orient them to kindergarten and to know what to expect when their child starts school.

I suppose for people who've never visited a homeless shelter, the image is about cots or bunk beds and free meals instead of support programs to help families get back on their feet. Here at People Serving People, the walls and elevators are papered with announcements about programs to help residents find work, prepare for interviews, take classes, develop techniques to deal with stress, tutoring kids, improve parenting skills, etc.

According to Mitt Romney, none of this would exist if President Obama is re-elected:

Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and you wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check.

Follow the link if you want more background. Obama's offer of a waiver to states on welfare requirements means states can try new ways to get people back to work without the states losing their federal funding. Governors have to request the waiver, and some GOP governors have already asked for more flexibility of this sort. Obama himself won't change anything; the state must have a plan to get people off welfare and into jobs sooner.

Romney's statement is what used to be called a lie. The media are reluctant call out lies, so they're even less likely to point out why the lie's being floated. It's all about resurrecting the mythical welfare queens of the Reagan era and stirring up resentment of the poor.

If conservative voters really understood what's left of welfare after the reforms of 1996, they might be more supportive of the program. If they saw the programs available in our shelter, they'd see how they contribute to more stable families and better outcomes for kids.

But the discourse isn't even close to that level.

For example, did you know a family of three in Minnesota has to earn less than $12,804 (all data from 2007) to qualify for "welfare" cash assistance? And if they earned the maximum and raked in every eligible dollar for a full year, at best, they'd still only have just over $19,000 to live on.

Of just under 67,000 total recipients in the state, 26% were adults. Of the remaining 74% who were children, nearly half were kids who did not have a parent receiving benefits.

Yet read Romney's statement again. It's not only wrong about the job training; it's misleading about who is actually getting that welfare check.

I don't know how many of the kids I work with receive Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, but I do know any little welfare princesses in my classroom won't be on it for long. There's a 60 month lifetime limit on their families receiving federally funded benefits.

 

 

 

 

Shelter Report: First in the Class.

The moment I come through the preschool door each week, Raeesha is there. Read to me, she says.

Today we read Rumplestiltskin, a book about a frog and the seasons, a book about occupations, a book about guinea pigs and another about sharks. There is a counting book, too, Elmo Walks the Dog, the Hungry Little Caterpillar and perhaps another I've forgotten. For some of these, another child sits in, but she's there for the duration.

We sit on a small blue padded bench that if it were scaled to adult size would be a love seat. She sits on my lap and turns the pages (the Elmo book has pages within the pages, and she turns them on cue).

I've seen an evaluation form that shows her as developmentally delayed. She's five, perhaps the oldest in the class, and that may be true, but she certainly is interested in the right things.

When we go out to the playground, she is the first to cry, Give me a ride on your shoulders for three minutes, and I do. When she asks for another, I tell her she has to wait her turn, and she does.

She'll take these opportunities sometimes to kiss me. I tell her, We don't kiss in school, and then I remember the first time I got in trouble in school was for kissing a girl when I was five.

I have some friends whose granddaughter is already reading at age five. I wonder if Raeesha would be reading by now if she had the other girl's family and wasn't living in a shelter.

It's not a question that's answerable or a situation that is changeable—at least not in the magic wand sort of way it happens in the children's books.

Instead, we work on counting and pattern recognition, colors, concepts, loving books, asking nicely, waiting our turn. By next fall, Raeesha will be in kindergarten, perhaps with kids who can already read and write.

I hope someone is there to put her first.